around here. Or else he was weak-according to their definition, that is-a weak person whom they couldn’t trust.”
“Or else they simply had a falling-out over something,” Bendrup said. “They may just have been hired hands. Connected to the organization, yes. Sent out by the gang leadership, no. Could be.”
“You said they may have had a falling-out,” Winter said. “Over what?” He felt a cold surge through his head and hair. Suddenly his pulse was racing.
“I can almost see what you’re thinking,” Bendrup said. “I can see it now. And it’s not a very nice thought.”
“Is it possible that the woman and the child had to disappear?” Winter asked.
“Well,” Bendrup said. “I’ve thought a lot about it, and that’s one potential explanation. Either there was an order handed down from above that the weak had to be gotten rid of, or else something happened between the robbers afterward. Maybe the men fought over the lives of the woman and child. Perhaps all their lives were in danger. Maybe it was just a coincidence that things turned out the way they did, but I don’t think so. All you can say for sure is that it was a nightmare.”
“Turned out the way they did?” Winter asked. “You mean that the one guy was murdered?”
“Yeah. He was shot, but why him?”
“Okay,” Winter said, and lit up a Corps. “They escape and get away. They hold out somewhere. Maybe others in some organization know where they are, maybe not. Then something happens. It’s possible they’ve already gone their separate ways, but let’s assume that one of the men is killed in the presence of the others. That leaves a man and a woman and possibly the child. The woman is from Sweden. They manage to make it back to Sweden-”
“Yeah, fucking hell,” Bendrup said. “We did what we could, but that wasn’t good enough. They must have had contacts and been taken across by some smuggler.”
“Or else they got themselves a contact,” Poulsen said. “They had money, after all, right?”
“If there was any money left,” Bendrup said. “With them, I mean. The money might already have been in the coffers.”
“But if the girl was actually along during the robbery, and we also know that she came to Sweden and was eventually found at a hospital in Gothenburg,” Winter said, “then the question is, who else made the trip over?”
“Maybe no one,” Bendrup said. “It’s not unthinkable that the woman and the last remaining man, if we call him that-that they’re dead too. That they died soon after the robbery. Executed.”
“Or else they came across too,” Poulsen said.
“So the last man was never identified?” Winter asked.
“No. He may have been a Swede. The woman was Swedish. The man might have been Swedish too.”
“Then why did they come over here in the first place?” Winter said. “Why did they specifically take part in this robbery?”
“Maybe there was a sister organization in Gothenburg, but we never managed to determine that,” Bendrup said. “That is, after we heard about the child and the hospital and the connection to Brigitta Dellmar. And that she’d been seen during the heist.”
“You found no link between her and any of the Danish men who were killed?”
“Nothing. Nor with anyone else in the fledgling organization. But there may have been. Maybe cross-border love. Just like cross-border collaboration. Spread the risk.”
“We really searched for them,” Poulsen said. “The woman and the man.”
“She’s never been heard from again,” Bendrup said. “And she had a little child, after all. That really points to only one possibility.”
“So, what was the deal with that house? Where was it? I can’t remember the name from the file.”
“Blokhus. On the North Sea. It’s a seaside resort.”
“You were able to establish that they’d been in a house there?”
“According to some witnesses, they had. We checked out the house, but it was empty. Empty as a tomb.”
“Of course this was long after the robbery,” Poulsen said.
“What?”
“They’d picked the lock or something and gotten inside. Or else they’d had a key. No one saw anything suspicious back then. The house was a bit isolated, given that there were no year-round residents. Now it’s different, but back then there were nothing but holiday homes along the whole street. They left no trace behind. Then the owners came along a few weeks later and continued renovating the house, which they’d already been in the process of doing for some time. New wallpaper. Fresh coat of paint. And finally someone living up the road reacted to all the commotion following the robbery. In other words, it all went very slowly.”
“How did they connect the robbers to that specific house?”
“They found something,” Bendrup said. “The owners of the house, that is.” He stood and picked up the binders. He found the one he was looking for and started flipping through it. “They were busy working on the house.” Bendrup put down the binder and picked up another one. “It should be here.”
“It was really just a small slip of paper wrapped up in a little child’s sweater,” Poulsen said. “It was when they were getting started on the flooring and were about to access the crawl space underneath. There was a loose floorboard in the corner, over by the window. Lying inside was a sweater, and that slip of paper fell out when they picked it up. It was a slip of paper with symbols on it. Like a map.”
“Here it is,” Bendrup said, and held out the binder. Winter felt sick to his stomach and excited at once. “Don’t you feel well?”
Winter shook his head. He took the binder. Lying in a plastic folder was a copy of the same map, or message, as the one he had studied several times in Gothenburg, with the same letters and numbers and a similar drawing that could be a set of instructions or anything at all: 5/20,-1630, 4-23?, L. v-H, C.
“I recognize this,” he said, and explained the connection to them.
“Good God,” Poulsen said. She’d removed her jacket.
“Well, we never managed to decipher it,” Bendrup said. “But this is a step forward nevertheless.”
“Did you find any fingerprints?” Winter asked.
“Mostly from those who touched the stuff afterward,” Bendrup said. “But we did come up with one set that belonged to Andersen.”
“Andersen? I haven’t seen anything about an Andersen in the files,” Winter said.
“What? Oh shit, sorry, I was unclear,” Bendrup said. “The robber we later found, the one who was floating in Limfjorden, his name was Moller and that’s how he appears on all official documents, but when we checked with his buddies here in town, it turns out he had some kind of a code name, and that was Andersen. They all had double names, every one of them.”
Winter’s mouth was dry. He had trouble swallowing, but he felt that he had to swallow before he could speak. “The dead woman in Gothenburg, her name is Andersen,” he said. “Helene Andersen. She adopted that name a few years ago. So she may well have been that little girl.”
“Good God,” Poulsen repeated.
“When did you find that out?” Bendrup asked. “Her identity, I mean. That name. Andersen.”
“Just a few days ago,” Winter said. “Everything’s gone so quickly after that. Didn’t you get the name from us? My registry clerk was supposed to send over most of the material ahead of my arrival.”
Poulsen looked at Bendrup.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Bendrup said. “I’ve been off work for the past three days and only came back this afternoon. The stuff was lying on my desk. It must have been there since it arrived, without anyone taking a look.”
“That’s my fault,” Poulsen said. “I should have checked the mail earlier. But maybe we’ve made some progress here after all.” She eyed Winter. “If you’d like, we can all head downtown now so you can have a firsthand look at where it happened.”
“But first we’re going to have a beer,” Bendrup said.
50
